NATO remains wary of Russia, despite Moscow insisting it is withdrawing some of the troops amassed along the Ukraine border. “We have not seen any withdrawal of Russian forces,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Wednesday. The leader of the Alliance believes that the movements are going rather in the opposite direction to what the Kremlin assures. “We are closely monitoring what Russia is doing in Ukraine and around Ukraine,” Stoltenberg said shortly before chairing a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels. And the conclusion of that analysis leaves no room for doubt, according to the secretary general: “They are increasing the number of troops and there are more troops on the way. So far there is no de-escalation.”
The defense ministers have agreed to start the study to deploy forces on the eastern flank of the Alliance, with battalions in Romania and Bulgaria, which would be added to those already operating in Poland and the Baltic countries. Stoltenberg regretted, at the end of the meeting, that Russia has imposed “a new normality, in which it has shown that it can compromise the fundamental principles of our security”. The secretary general of the Alliance believes that Moscow’s determination to “intimidate” neighboring countries forces the Western allies to strengthen their defense against possible aggression.
The meeting of ministers, scheduled for weeks, began on the same day that the US espionage services had pointed out as a possible start of a Russian attack against Ukraine. Since Washington shared that information on Friday, NATO has been on permanent alert and the EU has accelerated preparations for possible sanctions against Russia.
At the end of the meeting, Stoltenberg accused Russia of carrying out the largest military mobilization since the end of the Cold War. And to have “a massive force capable of invading Ukraine.” The secretary general has recalled that Western warnings about troop buildup, first launched at the end of 2021, have been fulfilled. And that although the allies have never been certain about the intentions of Russian President Vladimir Putin, the fact of having such an accumulated force makes a violent outcome possible. “We don’t know what is going to happen, but we know what has happened other times,” Stoltenberg said, referring to Russia’s attacks against Ukraine in 2014 or the presence of Russian troops on the territory of Georgia and Moldova without permission from the authorities. of those countries.
The secretary general has highlighted that the satellite images analyzed by different espionage services show that for the moment there has been no withdrawal of Russian troops. “The information we are sharing [entre los aliados] it can also be contrasted in public domain sources, with images from commercial satellites”, added the Norwegian.
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The day of this Wednesday has started with maximum tension in Eastern Europe and with the novelty of a cyberattack against Ukraine. But the advance of the hours showed that Moscow was not preparing an immediate military coup. “Wars in Europe rarely start on a Wednesday,” ironically Russia’s permanent representative to the EU, Vladimir Chizhov, in a comment for the German newspaper Die Welt. From Moscow, Washington’s forecast of an attack on February 16 was criticized as “the height of Western propaganda.”
But the tense calm this Wednesday has not led Westerners to lower their guard. The President of the European Council, Charles Michel, has called an extraordinary European summit for Thursday in order to analyze the situation in Ukraine. Michel took advantage of the fact that the 27 EU government leaders, including the Spanish, Pedro Sánchez, are in Brussels to attend the EU summit with the African Union, which is being held on Thursday and Friday.
The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has also expressed her doubts about the alleged Russian de-escalation. “We would welcome a de-escalation, but there are no tangible signs from Russia,” said the community leader after a telephone conversation with the Italian Prime Minister, Mario Draghi, in which they commented on the possible sanctions on Russia and the plans for contingency to alleviate collateral damage. Italy is one of the European countries most dependent on Russian gas.
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